Health care execs discuss changes in the industry

Friday

Nov 15, 2013 at 12:01 AM

FALL RIVER — Regional health care executives gathered Thursday to wax on changes in the industry — the Affordable Care Act, the increasing prevalence of data, state reform — and the effects that are already starting to take shape.

SIMÓN RIOS

FALL RIVER — Regional health care executives gathered Thursday to wax on changes in the industry — the Affordable Care Act, the increasing prevalence of data, state reform — and the effects that are already starting to take shape.

The panelists spoke at Bristol Community College's Fall River campus in an event organized by CONNECT, a Southeastern Massachusetts public higher education partnership.

Kim Hollon, president and CEO of Signature Healthcare, said reform is ushering a shift from fee-for-service medicine to a model where providers are "incentivized to keep people out of the system rather than in the system."

Hollon said the change is likely to decrease the volume of inpatient care — and also the correlated jobs, especially in the Bay State.

Massachusetts "has an admission rate that's 35 percent higher than the national average," he said.

Changes in health care have also resulted in an influx of data, Hollon said, driving the need for coding, physicians' use of IT, and more IT staff.

David DeJesus Jr., senior vice president of human resources at Southcoast Health System, spoke to the importance of data mining in today's health care.

"We are looking for clinicians, pharmacists, etcetera, who have the skill base in terms of health care informatics, working with data sets, taking information in population health management that spans across the region, and distilling that into usable information as we spread our programs and our services throughout the area."

Hollon talked about the need for the health care industry to implement lean manufacturing principles as adopted by companies like Toyota, which pioneered the efficiency-oriented management philosophy. He said health care is 10 to 20 years behind manufacturing in making these changes.

Peter Georgeopoulos, CEO of Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, said the New Bedford area continues to have a high level of uninsured.

"When the governor talks about 98 percent of the people in Massachusetts (being) covered and we're very proud of that, well, I guess that we must get all the 2 percent (at the health center)," he said.

"We have 23 percent of our patients coming in with no coverage, no knowledge of what the coverage is."

Georgeopoulos said this could be exacerbated by the Affordable Care Act's Dec. 15 deadline to sign up to be covered by Jan. 1.

"The good news is (people can get) coverage," he said. "The bad news is it's taking one hour for a patient to (register)."